i just watched religulous.

[bahzew]

bill maher is a jerk but i guess i mostly agree with him.

i think i am a cultural relativist. or, at the least, i have am not comfortable being comfortable with universals.
this is why i have a hard time with religion.
i think religion is, for the most part, bull shit.
i like all the "be nice and compassionate and take care of each other" stuff.
but i think that mode of thinking can have origins in a medium other than explicitly religious thought.
like logic.
like studying and thinking and watching... and realizing that when people do this and that, that and this happens.
hence, war makes things harder for everybody.
depleting resources makes things harder.
hating people for ideological reasons makes things harder.
having better schools makes things easier.
keeping people healthier makes things easier.
tolerance and compassion make things easier.

we just need to seek what makes it so that people, regardless of setting, can be healthy happy safe and creative.
and realizing that means we don't need religious tenets to dicate our behavior,
that we can figure out what's beneficial to our plane of existence on our own.

and because there lurks in me seeds of cultural relativism,
i understand why other people think that what i think is bull shit, too--and so have the utmost respect, sincerely, for the people are religious and seek to understand and to help.

but maybe my definition of "to understand" and "to help" are also relative.